Social Media

Looking through Facebook at school libraries using this social media as a tool of communicating with the community was disappointing. For so many it was used as a form of showcasing student's achievements, sharing photos of school events, and reminders of upcoming events, which is great. However, the lack of "likes" and comments on the posts lead me to believe that it isn't really being utilized, unless people are seeing the posts, but not responding to them. The other part that I noticed was the lack of updates from the school library. If a school library is going to have a Facebook page then it is up to the librarian to make sure it gets updated at the very minimum monthly. One school library page hasn't had any new activity since 2014! If it is not something that is going to be maintained then it would be best to not have one. Another interesting point to me is that when I began teaching in 1997, I sat through beginning of the year in-service days where we were told not to have social media accounts and definitely don't share the site with students and their parents.  Slowly, we were encouraged to begin using technology to communicate with our students, parents and the community, beginning with very simple web pages. They were very cumbersome to set up, and update and pages were controlled by the district office personnel. Eventually, those websites got easier to update and the teachers had more flexibility in creating pages for their site. Now in-service days include extensive training on digital citizenship and appropriate use of social media sites. We are encouraged to set up social media sites for our students, parents and the community. I am a bit apprehensive to set up a social media site for the library just because of the way it was drilled for so long how inappropriate it was. But times are changing, and we need to embrace it. Many schools block social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, so that would require the librarian to post on her own time. It would also limit student access to these sites, if they don't have internet at home.I think this is where we are at a crossroad in education because our 21st century learners are digital natives, but a lot of the district office personnel and older teachers (myself included) are digital immigrants, and we want to utilize all of the technology, but we are apprehensive to let go of what we know and are comfortable with. I would love to start a Facebook page for my school library and see how it goes. I can't at this time, because I do not have permission. At Noel Elementary School Library,   
I love the "genre spotlight"idea, that is definitely something I would like to try at my school.Another Facebook page I really liked was Greenspun Junior High School, although it doesn't seem like they have posted anything new since 2014, I loved the librarian's enthusiasm and the videos he made. Plus 40 computers in the library for student use-awesome! He also did contests on Facebook, so more students followed it. I liked looking at the different Library Facebook pages, there are a lot of great ideas out there. I think that since we live in a digital society, we need to be the leaders that expand in to the digital tech world, even if it is only by embracing one new tool at a time until you feel comfortable with it.

I admit that I have never used Twitter in my whole life! I'm 43 years old and I now have a Twitter account. I am following the people that Dr. Gross asked us to. I must admit I'm fascinated and completely overwhelmed by it all. I think it's going to take me a little bit of time to figure out how it all works, which I think will be fairly easy to do, chances are students will be able to help me set up a Twitter page and teach me what I need to know. I feel like more kids use Twitter and Instragram than Facebook, so this is probably the one site that I really need to learn and quickly! I'm mesmerized by the sights and really want to delve deeper into each one so I can figure this out and see how I could make it work for my school library.